State workers should pay to play

A few months ago, experts laid it out for us: the pension fund for state workers and teachers is broken.

Underfunded by $17.6 billion.

"This fund is in serious jeopardy," Edward T. Burton III, an economics professor at the University of Virginia and a trustee of the Virginia Retirement System, said at the time

Gov. Bob McDonnell heard, loud and clear. So in December he proposed something politically unpopular, but crucial if government workers and teachers want their pensions, now and in the future.

He wants state workers to pay into their own retirement plans for the first time in 27 years. Right now, Virginia taxpayers are paying the workers' contribution, as well as the employer's.

Needless to say, the idea isn't popular with state workers, who want to keep the deal they signed on for in 1983 when they traded a pay raise for taxpayers funding their pensions.

And it's not popular with elected leaders who want to keep their own jobs.

But times have changed, the economy flat-lined, and non-state workers are struggling to afford their own day-to-day, much less fund the generous — and relatively early — retirements of hundreds of thousands of state workers and teachers.

So lawmakers should pass on the chance to score cheap political points and instead get behind the governor's plan, or some form of it.

Last year, they did agree to require state workers hired after July 1 to pay a 5 percent contribution to their retirement fund.

This year, they should finish the job and require existing state workers to pay their fair share, too.

And if there's a political price to be paid, consider it well earned: For 16 of the last 21 years, lawmakers chose not to fully fund the retirement system, even when the economy was flush.

Even last year, they — and McDonnell — chose once more to take $620 million in tax dollars intended for the retirement system and use it instead to try to plug a gaping $4.6 billion hole in the budget.

"Because he refused to pay into the fund … in order to appear to balance the budget," Brian Moran, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said earlier, "now he is asking state employees to pay for his sleight-of-hand."

And, while I've blasted the governor over the past year for his ultraconservative positions on any number of issues — abortion funding, Confederate history, protections for gay state employees, etc. — I commend his efforts to try to get the retirement system solvent again

Without completely breaking the backs of taxpayers.

"I want history to record that it was you, the 2011 session of the General Assembly, who had the vision to take the big problems head on and fix them," McDonnell said in his State of the Commonwealth speech last Wednesday. "No excuses, no delays, no spin."

In fact, if I have a quibble with the governor on state pensions, it's that he doesn't go far enough.

McDonnell hopes to cushion the financial blow by giving state workers a 3 percent bonus to offset the 5 percent before-tax deduction.

The workers' share, then, would only be 2 percent. Taxpayers would foot the 3 percent bonus. This is a feeble step toward personal responsibility and smaller, smarter government. And one more insult to taxpayers.

Workers in the private sector, for instance, are regularly panicked over whether their contributions to their own 401(k)s — if those retirement plans are even offered by their employers — will be enough to keep them from a cat food diet when they're finally too old to work anymore.

Asked if they'd pay 5 percent of their wages if it meant they could retire at 60 or so with generous benefits, they'd jump at the chance.

On the other hand, asked if they'd like to work well into their dotage to pay government workers to retire youngish and live well, they'd likely spit in your face.

Yet this is how things work in Virginia.

"I won't pass this crisis to another governor," McDonnell said, "and you should not pass this problem on to new legislators in future."